


Our doubts are traitors

by PandaInTheStars



Series: Lucifer Oneshots [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s04e02 Somebody's Been Reading Dante's Inferno, F/M, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaInTheStars/pseuds/PandaInTheStars
Summary: Chloe’s hand shakes, but the glass does not tip.





	Our doubts are traitors

“Our doubts are traitors,

and make us lose the good we oft might win,

by fearing to attempt.”

― William Shakespeare, _Measure for Measure_

 

 

Chloe’s hand shakes, but the glass does not tip.

The dark liquid drops into the glass, swirls, and disappears into the blood red wine. Only then does the music Lucifer promised blast forward. Stunned, Chloe drops the vial. She scrambles to pick it up and replace the cap, her hands still shaking as she works quickly to push it back into her pocket. Apologies are already springing to her lips—apologies to Lucifer, to her friends and family, to God?

“Sorry! Hadn’t realized I left it so loud,” Lucifer’s voice calls brightly from his bedroom alcove. He trots back into the living room, his jacket swishing around him. He lowers himself primly back into the seat of blankets in front of her. He points the remote control he’s holding at his sound system and the cacophonous music finally dulls to a low roar in the background.

Lucifer’s attention then returns to her. Chloe does her best to keep steady under his gaze. Her hands still shake beneath the table, but the past week has given her practice at staring into those ageless eyes and withstanding his too-familiar touch. “You know,” he begins, and then smiles self-deprecatingly. But is it really self-deprecation? He’s had eons to perfect that wry grin. “I was planning to do something like this before… before everything.”

“Planning?” Chloe repeats, proud that her voice doesn’t tremble. What had the Devil been planning for her? The question has haunted her for weeks.

“Yes… before… Charlotte… and everything else. I… understood that you’re a woman of reason and logic. I knew that simply _telling_ you that I’m, well, you know. It wouldn’t convince you. I would need to show you proof. Of course, I didn’t want to just, well, spring it on you!” He laughs, but the pitch is a little too high. “I would have broken it to you gently. Well. Gentle-er. Maybe then… Maybe if…” He trails off, his eyes searching the air for something Chloe can’t see.

“Well, none of that matters now,” he says. “I just wanted to express how… grateful I am. I admit, I was a little, ah, _concerned_ over how you might react. But I see now you are something truly special, Detective.” His mouth folds into a small smile, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “I see now I needn’t have worried.”

Chloe’s throat works as she tries to form a response to this declaration. Try as she might, she can’t pull up the terrifying image of the red monster that followed her in her dreams all the way to Europe. Every night it would superimpose itself on her partner’s face or reflect back at her from the pages of the Vatican’s archives. But now, with the _thing_ , the _creature_ , sitting across from her with a nervous smile and puppy dog eyes, all she can see is… Lucifer. Her partner.

She remembers dancing under golden streamers. Monopoly and karaoke. Shared smiles and touches. An absolute surety that no matter the circumstance, no matter what crazy ill-advised action her maybe-delusional partner would take, he would always be there for her. When it really came down to it. He would be there.

“I—I’m glad,” she says, the syllables forcing themselves through clenched teeth.

Lucifer’s head tilts, as if puzzled by her tone, but he doesn’t remark on it. Instead he reaches forward and picks up his wine glass.

“So, a toast then?” he asks, clear and innocent. “To new beginnings?”

Chloe’s eyes fix on where his fingers curl around the glass’s stem. The world around her blurs out, the jaunty music becoming indistinct. She says something like “Yes” and picks up her own glass. But her fingers are numb, and she can’t feel the smooth texture. She watches faintly as Lucifer smiles, easy and familiar, before lifting the glass to his lips. She watches as the liquid tilts. Her eyes widen.

Chloe doesn’t know exactly what happens next, but in between one shallow breath and another, she drops her glass. It shatters against the table, and in that moment her freed hand reaches out and smacks Lucifer’s own drink out of his grasp. The glass collides with the soft surface of the throw blankets with a quiet thump, and the liquid instantly spills out.

Chloe recoils. She slumps back against the sofa and drops her head. She’s shaking from head to toe. She gulps in one breath after another. She can’t catch her breath. She can’t breathe. She almost… She—

“Detective?” Lucifer’s voice calls softly, and as Chloe turns to look at him the world blurs back into focus. His eyes are dark, his brow furrowed. He blinks at her, then reaches for the remote control and turns the music off. “Detective, what’s going on?”

And in that instant it all comes rushing back. The fear. The great big cosmic eye-in-the-sky peering down at _her_ , little Chloe Decker, a _nobody_. This _thing_ , this monster from the beginning of time, blood-thirsty and ready to pounce the moment she shows any weakness… This is it. This is the end. She tried her best but in the moment of truth she couldn’t do it and that means—

“Please!” she gasps. She tries to swallow down the hysteria, but she can’t quite manage it. “ _Please_ don’t hurt Trixie.”

Lucifer’s mouth falls open. He leans back and gapes at her. “What?” he says, his voice ashen. “Me? Hurt your offspring?” She watches as his eyes shift to the spilled glass and back. “Detective, what are you talking about?”

Chloe sucks in greedy breaths. She needs to get out of here. She needs to _move_. But she can barely feel her legs. Even if she could, she’s shaking so hard she doubts she would be able to get them to function with the correct rhythm.

Then Lucifer’s eyes narrow and Chloe’s heartbeat flutters. He eyes the spilled drink again. “What did you do?” he asks, and this time his voice is low, a thread of real danger filtering through.

If Chloe’s going to go down, she’s going to go down fighting. She grinds down the fear, drags the emotion through her chest until it emerges raw and _angry_. “Why are you here?” she grits out.

Those dark eyes watch her. Silent, judging. His head tilts a fraction to the left. He doesn’t blink.

Chloe channels the roiling storm within her. “WHY are you _here_?” she asks again, this time loud and blazing. “Why—why me? What are you—what do you want? What do you want with _me_?” She pulls up a shaking hand and clutches it to her chest.

“Detective,” Lucifer says. She’s never heard him speak her title with so much malice before. “What was in my drink?”

Chloe shakes her head. Her eyes close and her mouth forms over the word ‘nothing’ but she doesn’t say it aloud.

“Do _not_ lie to me.”

Dark, like midnight. The King of Hell. The Fallen Angel. The Ruler of the Damned.

Chloe slowly raises her head and peers at the Devil from behind her eyelashes. His eyes are a deep red, like banked flame.

Chloe flinches back with a soft gasp.

The fire instantly blinks out, and Lucifer slumps backward. His eyes wander to the penthouse ceiling. “You’re afraid of me,” he says, almost thoughtfully. Then his gaze drifts to the dark red stain marking his throw blanket. “You were going to hurt me.”

Chloe watches in trepidation as he stands up. On her knees, he towers over her. She stares up at him, waiting for the blow, the attack, _something_ , but nothing happens. He turns and walks to where his glass fell and picks it up. He sniffs its contents, his nose wrinkling. Then he walks back to her and sits down again, his expression stormy. He rolls the glass between his fingers.

“Why?” is all he says.

Chloe swallows. When it emerges, her voice is small and thready. “He… said it would send you home.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows quirk. “He?”

“Father—” And Chloe cuts herself off. Who knows what Lucifer would do if she revealed the identity of the priest who helped her?

Lucifer barks out a laugh. “Father?” he says incredulously. “Sought religious guidance, did you? So that’s where you’ve been all this time. I should have known. Europe, you said? Rome, perhaps? How’s the Colosseum these days? Still morbidly fascinating to all those crowds of unwashed tourists? How about the Vatican? The Swiss Guard still managing to make a bold fashion statement?”

Chloe shivers under the onslaught of sarcasm. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” she says, trying to keep at least some measure of defiance in her voice. “I just wanted to help you… to… to get back to where you belong.”

Any humor in Lucifer’s expression slips away. The glass stills between his fingers. “Where I belong?” he repeats. Then he snorts. “Send me home? What am I, a stray tiger? Do I need to be relocated back to my natural habitat in Bangladesh?” His words cut at Chloe, each syllable a stabbing blow.

Chloe schools her expression. Her face, she realizes, is wet. When did that happen? “You are the Devil,” she says, gritting each word out one by one. She had hoped saying it out loud would help alleviate how surreal the situation is, but it doesn’t. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in… in _Hell_?” she continues, whispering the last word.

Lucifer stares at her with his dark, unblinking eyes. “Funny thing about Hell, Detective,” he says lowly. “It’s not exactly the most fun place to be.”

Chloe takes a moment to wipe her face with the heel of her palm. “So… so that’s why you’re here? To have fun?” Was that all this was? The Devil came to Earth and decided to play some kind of long game with an unsuspecting mortal? Was it all a trick? A joke?

“Amongst other things,” says Lucifer. “I never chose to live in that Godawful place. I never _wanted_ to be its ruler. I snuck out every chance I got. I only recently found a way to stay on Earth permanently.”

Chloe thinks back to the thick book Father Kinley gave her. Pages and pages of carefully snipped articles, photographs, souvenirs – relics of Lucifer’s visits to Earth. Kinley insisted that each recorded moment in time was a testament to Lucifer’s penchant for destruction. His Divine Purpose was to sow chaos, and he was built to unleash that chaos in Hell. On Earth he was an unchecked force of devastation. He didn’t belong here.

Chloe looks at the man sitting across from her. She thinks about his hedonism. His manic desire to squeeze pleasure out of every possible situation. The drugs, the alcohol, the wild parties, the women… and that _thing_ she had always known was there, deep down: a longing for connection, _real_ connection, with other people. “Was it… is it really that bad?”

Lucifer smiles weakly. “Put it this way, Detective. There’s no music in Hell.”

And Lucifer owns a nightclub. Where he plays piano and sings every night.

There’s a hole in Chloe’s chest.

She had almost been party to sending him back to that… that place.

“Lucifer,” she starts, and her cheeks are damp again.

“I think you should leave, Detective.”

She would if she could, Chloe thinks, but her knees are still locked and her legs are frozen in place. Her eyes wander around the scene before her aimlessly. When she first walked into the penthouse her mind had been so focused and petrified that it really felt like she was entering the dragon’s lair… or… or… the tower where the princess would be locked away forever. Now it just looks like Lucifer’s penthouse—a place filled with warm memories, drunken revelries, and now a rolling wave of crushing guilt.

Chloe side-eyes Lucifer. He’s just sitting there, slightly slumped, like a marionette with cut strings. His face is expressionless. She purses her lips. “And… why me?” she says, breaking the silence.

Lucifer just tips his head and looks at her. He shakes his head in confusion.

“I mean… okay, the Devil moves to Los Angeles to… live a better life, I guess,” she says, the idea starting to crystallize and then fracture in her mind. “And then what? Why… follow me around? Why work for the LAPD? _Why me_?”

Lucifer doesn’t move, but his gaze drifts away. She watches as his eyes rove around the room: first to the single rose carefully placed on the table, then the lit candles, then the grilled cheese juxtaposed against the absurdly fancy cutlery. Then back to her. He’s looking at her lips, she realizes, and then his gaze lifts and he’s looking directly into her eyes.

“I thought you knew, Detective.”

 _Oh_.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the fear muscles its way in again. So he doesn’t want to kill her. Or Trixie. But the Devil feeling… The Devil being… Is that any better? Is that a less scary existential prospect? Chloe’s hindbrain doesn’t seem to think so. Chloe is a single mom. She’s starting to push 40. She has a desk and she does her taxes and she owns many, many brown shoes. What did she do? Where did she transgress? What part of her made the world’s boogeyman want to…?

Adrenaline courses through her veins again, this time unlocking her from ‘frozen’ mode and pushing her very firmly towards ‘flight,’ but Lucifer beats her to it.

He lurches to his feet and—uncharacteristically ungracefully—stumbles his way towards his bar. She watches as he reaches up and grabs a bottle of amber liquid, turning his back on her. He pulls off the cap and throws the bottle back, chugging the liquid like it isn’t expensive, high proof, single malt. After several swallows he stops and takes a breath. Then he pulls down another bottle and then another, repeating the process, all the while keeping his back turned.

He’s done with her.

He’s giving her an out.

Chloe rises to her feet. Her legs hold sturdy beneath her. She feels like she needs to say something, _anything_ , but she has no idea what it should be. Her mind is overworked and her emotions feel like they’ve been raked over hot coals. Slowly, one foot in front of the other, she makes her way back to the elevator, all the while keeping Lucifer in her sights. Just as she reaches the threshold and pushes the call button, he speaks.

“Not to me,” he says quietly, staring at the bottle of brandy he’s holding as if it holds all the answers. Then he turns around and his eyes meet hers. He shakes his head. “Not to me.”

The elevator ‘dings’ brightly and Chloe jumps at the noise. She backs through the doors as soon as they trundle open. Lucifer’s eyes remain fixed on her. In the last moment before the doors close, she sees him turn away and bring the bottle to his lips.

Chloe waits as the elevator moves to the ground floor.

There had been a time in her life when her greatest fear was that a slightly insane man would never love her the way she loved him.

Her fears are so much bigger now. They are cosmic in scale.

But it’s the small fears that are telling her that she has lost.


End file.
